


unfinished business.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, M/M, Post 8x23 "Sacrifice"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat





	unfinished business.

I.

You say,  _So this is it_ , and he looks like he agrees.

There are words for moments like this.  There are eulogies, epigraphs; final words and last rites, but in the end you're just tired, so fucking tired, and so once again you let him go without saying goodbye. 

You meant to say,  _I’m sorry._   You meant to say,  _I’m a damn fool_ _._   

Those last words ought to sound something like this: something like _Don’t go yet._ Those last words ought to be  _We’ve got unfinished business, you and me_. 

Unfinished business: yeah, that sounds about right; just like always, he disappears like the roll of thunder between lightning strikes.

This is what happens when you let him go, every damn time.

II.

He surprises you by saying, _You never used to look at me like that,_ and you pull the beer back from your mouth and look at him.

 _Like that_ _,_  he says,  _the way you’re looking at me right now_ , and you open your mouth, but nothing comes out.  

You want to explain.  You want to tell him that you don’t look at a person the same after you’ve seen them dead, and you’ve seen him like that, you still see him dead in the worst of your dreams: jaw slack, chest stilled, veins opened and blood dripping slowly down the collar of his shirt.  

You’ve seen him like that, spread out across a concrete floor pooling with blood.  You’ve seen him like that, cold to your touch, his eyes closed against your gaze, and you haven’t been able to look at him the same way since.   

You've seen him dead, and you couldn’t think of a word to say, so you only said his name.

You don't tell him that this is how you look at someone right before you let them go.

III.

This is the secret that follows you wherever you go; this is the secret at the bottom of the well:

You should have held him as he died, you should have wiped the blood off his face.  You should have held him against your heart until his body was cool to the touch, until the only heat was the warmth your skin bleed into  his.

He was dead before you reached him, and that’s no excuse; you saw him like that, and you let him go.  

You saw him like that, and you didn’t even tell him goodbye.

You should have closed his eyes and kissed the lids, you should have pressed your lips all over his ruined face. You should have folded his hands in his lap, should've picked up that empty body and carried him with you.

But you didn't, couldn't, never got the chance - none of that matters; you carried him with you anyway, and that phantom weight you bore all those long months was more than you could stand. 

That weight has a name, and that name is regret: Of all the lost opportunities, this hurts the worst, the way you wouldn't hold him as he died.  You see those empty eyes in the worst of your dreams; those closed eyes are the reason your nightmares wear his face.

This is why you shouldn’t be able to hold another in your arms, but you have and you will.  This is how you’ve betrayed him: how something’s missing, something’s always missing now, how there will always be something missing, and there’s a name and face and a pair of hands that go along with this loss, but you can’t tell say that name, or feel those missing hands warm on your skin.

You tell yourself every time he comes back from the land of the dead:  _This time will be different._ You tell yourself:  _This time I will tell him goodbye._

You’re hoping for - well, you’re not really sure.  Something longer than the handspan of moments between one heartbeat and the next, something more, a chance to say something, anything.  Even the dead get their last rites. Even ashes have a handful of words tossed after them into the wind.   Death might not be permanent for him, but a goodbye surely is.

You’d say,  _Have a good life_ , but for all you know he’ll be dead the moment after heaven’s gates slam shut, and anyway you know from experience there’s nothing resemble life to found up there among the harps and haloes.  

You’d say,  _Thank you for everything_ , but after ripping him a new one for leaving you with those same words, you’d kind of feel like a jerk for throwing them back in his face.

If you’re going to get the last words in, you want them to be the right ones.  Maybe this last last-night-on-earth speech won’t end on a sour note, the way it has every goddamned time before, the way you’ve always managed to send him off with a bitter taste at the back of your throat; with words, bitterer still, chasing your anger down like whisky.

IV.

The worst part is knowing that you’ll never know what might have happened.  

This is what saying goodbye really is to you: throwing your head back and swallowing the taste of those what-might-have-beens along with a shot.  This is what goodbye really means: _goodbye_ means giving up on a future where you'd still have a chance to say all the things you should've been saying all along.

You want to be able to tell him that when he was gone, you woke every morning with a taste like wormwood and black water in the back of your throat, and a case of the you-will-nevers.

How you will never know if his body might have washed ashore after that trenchcoat; how you will never know because you didn't wait around to find out.  How you will never know what it might have felt like, if you had ever wrapped your arms around him and pulled him close, if he would have felt like solid rock, an immovable force, or if he might have melted against you, collapsing like a dying star in your arms.

You will never know if he might have hugged you back.  

You will never know how his hair might have felt under your touch; you will never know if his lips were as chapped as they looked.

You will never know if, after that first kiss, you'll fall asleep with his closed eyes on your mind.  

But he dies, he comes back, and you’re fucking tired of this roller coaster: you want off.

You see him crouching by a riverbank, and you don't tell him,  _I carved your name into every monster I met_.   You see his reflection next to yours in the rearview mirror, and you don't say,  _We can save each other, I could have saved you if you’d let me try_.  

There are a thousand conversations you’ll never have with him, a lifetime of sentiments you’ll never say and he’ll never hear, and the weight of each one hangs in the silence between you.  

Last chance.  Final words.  

He sits beside you in a bar and you don't say, _I’ll always want you to come back._   He stands up to go and you don't say,  _I wish you wouldn’t fucking leave in the first place._

Unfinished business: the last word he hears from you is only his name.

V.

You don't say,  _Last night on earth._

You don't ask him if he''s got any plans.

You don't take him back to your room. You don't tug off his trenchcoat; you don't take off his shoes. You don't marvel over this moment, how out of everything you’ve ever experienced with him, this is by far the most intimate, the most personal, how it’s those stupid dress socks that hit you right in the chest, how odd and silly and perfectly human they look, those navy socks on his feet.  

You don't notice the way his ankles jut out sharply, the way the left sock slides down his calf, and you don't notice that it looks ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.  You don't wonder why looking at those socks makes your throat go tight, you don't think about how those rumpled socks on your best friend's feet are the reason you oh-so-carefully lay down beside him in your bed and wrap your arms around him.

You don't think about how you want him to wake up with your arms around his waist and your face tucked in the crook of his neck and an empty hole in his heart filled up with your love.

You don't think about how tomorrow he will disappear out of your life like he was never there; your breath doesn't catch in your throat because you know how losing him is like opening a vein, every time.

You don't whisper in between kisses,  _No more unfinished business_ , and he doesn't say  _I’ll tell you everything, Dean._

You don’t say  _Slow down_.  You don’t say _Don’t go, I need to hold you, I  want to make sure this is real._

You don't wish you could erase those new sharp lines on his face, you don't wish you could tap a line direct to God and give Him an earful.  You don't think about telling Him,  _Don’t be so hard on him, he’s trying so damn hard to be good_ , and you don't think  _Thanks for sending him to me; it_ must’ve _been You who sent him to me, so stop fucking trying to take him back._   

You don't think about taking his hand and whispering,  _Finders, keepers_.

You don't lay your head down on his chest, feeling his sweat on your arms and the taste of him in your mouth.  You don't press your ear against his heart and say, _I can hear your heart beat._

Even now, you sometimes wake up from that same old dream, the one where he wakes up beside you.

 _It’s not my heart_ , he murmurs, close by your ear. He traces the curve of your cheek with the palm of his hand, the back of his fingers trailing down the side of your face.   _I’m just borrowing it.  Or maybe I stole it._

This is what you don’t say: _You stole mine too, you dick._

He looks at you, really looks at you, and it scares you to death because that's the way he always looks at you, like he’s seeing you for the last time.  He looks at you with wide blue eyes and you know he doesn’t understand that you love him, even now, in this dream of what-might-have-been, this dream of what never was.

Afterwards he moves away from you, pulling back with a long exhale of air, and army-crawls to the other side of the bed where he lingers, hanging off the edge, tempting gravity.  

You say,  _I’m not done with you_ , and he only grunts, eyes shut and lashes whispering against his cheek like all the tender words you never said, but you can tell he’s listening anyway, so you follow him on your elbows and knees and tuck yourself in close, pressing yourself against every line of his body, and miracle of miracles, he lets you.

You fall asleep like that, and when you wake, you find him folded against you, the length of your sides touching all the way down.  He sleeps curled in on himself, the curve of his shoulder illuminated by the glow of streetlights through the window in your room.

It's the same goddamned dream, every time, and even here you can't say it.

You don’t say, _I love you._   You don't tell him,  _I etched your name into the black of my heart, and with every letter something bright shines through the darkness._

You don’t tell him, you don’t tell him.

You don’t press your forehead to his and rest it there.  You don’t say,  _We’ve got unfinished business, you and me._

 

 

 

 


End file.
